Because it’s all meaningless propaganda and is meant to not reflect, talk about or address reality at all.
Which is why it’s so toxic for society. Fiction’s supposed to mirror or discuss important aspects of real life, but it doesn’t anymore, and because of it, people have no guidance, and society crumbles.
Having rectennas for those things on the Earth instead of solar farms would benefit conservation though, as it’s essentially just chicken wire you can hang over farms and forested areas that won’t disturb wildlife. Actually if memory serves, those things can’t efficiently transmit at frequencies that would damage life. It uses like, the same frequency as wifi. I’d be worried about it causing cell phone interference.
I can imagine some shitty government deliberately building microwave MASERs using the tech specifically to burninate opponents though. All the more reason for everybody to organize and take power away from them so they can’t.
Why do I get the feeling China or Russia would try though?
I would imagine the population will stabilize itself and/or we will begin human expansion into space before that becomes an issue, but that is a thing I read about. There is a hard maximum number of people that could live on this planet in modernity. 🤔 I’m not sure how having space solar power now would make that an issue though. The heat issue is something we’ll have to think about down the line.